I don't think anyone questions that there are major realignments under way in the globe, from the emergence of "The Quad" or what I've been calling the "Quadruple Entente", to BREXIT, the increased tensions between the USA and China, and now, between Russia and the E.U., and for the latter, one may conveniently substitute "Germany" for the E.U., that is, at least according to this article by Tom Luongo shared by V.T.(a big thank you for doing so):

Health authorities in Sweden have refused to follow the rest of Europe by imposing new coronavirus lockdown measures on their population, arguing that those beset by loneliness and misery of being isolated have suffered enough.

Despite Sweden mirroring other countries on the continent with rising coronavirus infections, the government has held firm in refusing to lockdown its population, weighing the untold misery and health impacts of isolation against the threat of COVID-19.

It finally looks like the four-and-a-half-year saga of Brexit is coming to an ignominious end. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson called the final bluff of the incompetent bureaucrats in Brussels, walking away from trade talks while leaving the door open.

But that door is only open if the EU is willing to crawl in on its knees and give the UK what it wants, a minimal free trade deal, Canada-style, which was offered by then President of the European Council Donald Tusk.

The EU played hardball giving zero ground for four years while undermining the UK from within its own political and bureaucratic structures. It was as transparent as it was cynical, but it couldn’t sway the British people and that gave Johnson the political will to just say no.

THIS WEEK the British-based bank HSBC closed down two accounts linked to the new racial nationalist political party Patriotic Alternative — a personal account belonging to one of PA’s leaders Laura Towler, and the party’s official business account.

H&D understands complaints are being made to the relevant banking oversight authorities.

HSBC is the sixth largest bank in the world and the largest in Europe. It was founded in 1865 as the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank, making its initial fortune from opium trading.

Protesters defied curfew and attacked police vehicles in Italy’s third-largest city of Naples. The anger was sparked by the governor’s call for a new lockdown after the spread of Covid-19 hit a new daily record.

Chanting “Freedom!” the angry crowds marched through the city streets on Friday night, with some hurling bottles, smoke bombs and other projectiles at the officers. Others attempted to erect barricades using garbage containers and set some of them on fire. Police deployed tear gas as they tried to disperse the rioters.

Videos posted on social media show groups of people attacking police vehicles, forcing the officers to leave the scene.

The Campania region, which includes Naples, announced it would go into lockdown on Friday as the number of COVID-19 cases [test positives] soared.

Demonstrators threw flares and other missiles at police who responded with tear gas.

There were unconfirmed reports protestors stormed local government offices.

Jakub Wondreys posted a video of the disorder on Twitter with the caption: “Big anti-regional government COVID-19 restrictions protests are happening right now in Naples, Italy.

A former chief executive of Russian oil company Rosneft has accused one of Europe’s oldest banks of conspiring with New York brokers in a kickback scheme that caused him to lose more than half of his $150 million investment portfolio.

Sergei Bogdanchikov accused banking group Edmond de Rothschild of steering his funds to a pair of New York firms that he says lost money on bad investments and charged inflated fees to kick commissions back to the bank. The bank also used the now-defunct Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca to form shell companies to hide the scheme, according to a lawsuit Bogdanchikov filed in New York state court on Wednesday.

When the European Union speaks as a superior, Russia wants to know: Can we do any business with the EU?"

Sergey Lavrov, Russia’s Foreign Minister, is the world’s foremost diplomat. The son of an Armenian father and a Russian mother, he’s just on another level altogether. Here, once again, we may be able to see why.

Let’s start with the annual meeting of the Valdai Club, Russia’s premier think tank. Here we may follow the must-watch presentation of the Valdai annual report on “The Utopia of a Diverse World”, featuring, among others, Lavrov, John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago, Dominic Lieven of the University of Cambridge and Yuri Slezkine of UCLA/Berkeley.

Brussels’ chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier has claimed that it is the UK’s and the EU’s “common responsibility” to agree on a deal and stop a clean-break, no-deal Brexit.

Just last week, Prime Minister Boris Johnson had declared that negotiations with the EU had failed over the bloc’s intransigence on issues like anti-competition rules and fishing, and that the UK should prepare for a no deal.

However, Mr Johnson did not officially withdraw from trade talks, instead his proxies stating in the following days that negotiations could restart if Europe were willing to compromise. EU insiders interpreted the prime minister’s threat of no deal as mere bluster, with one saying that “if the UK would really not care about having a new deal, it would have left the table long ago”.

Talks recommenced in London on Thursday, with Mr Barnier telling Reuters: “I think it’s very important to be back at the table.”

Police fired pepper spray at hundreds of demonstrators in Warsaw as they opposed a court ruling almost completely banning abortion in the country.

Several hundred people gathered in front of Poland’s Constitutional Court and marched towards the residence of the Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the leader of the country’s ruling Law and Justice Party (PiS), to protest a court decision that essentially outlaws abortion.

Police used pepper spray to disperse the crowd. In response, the protesters threw rocks and attempted to break through the cordon around the house.

Sergey Lavrov, Russia’s Foreign Minister, is the world’s foremost diplomat. The son of an Armenian father and a Russian mother, he’s just on another level altogether. Here, once again, we may be able to see why.

Let’s start with the annual meeting of the Valdai Club, Russia’s premier think tank. Here we may follow the must-watch presentation of the Valdai annual report on “The Utopia of a Diverse World”, featuring, among others, Lavrov, John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago, Dominic Lieven of the University of Cambridge and Yuri Slezkine of UCLA/Berkeley.

It’s a rarity to be able to share what amounts to a Himalayan peak in terms of serious political debate. We have, for instance, Lieven – who, half in jest, defined the Valdai report as “Tolstoyian, a little anarchical” – focusing on the current top two, great interlocking challenges: climate change and the fact that “350 years of Western and 250 years of Anglo-American predominance are coming to an end.”

Russia’s Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline to Germany will be completed and become operational in early 2021.

On Wednesday, Russia’s Energy Minister Alexander Novak announced the following:

“Nord Stream 2 will go operational by the end of 2020.”

“One of the ships that can be used to finalize it is now in the Far East. Some time will be required for extra preparations.”

Earlier after the Swiss-based pipe-laying firm Allseas pulled out of the project in response to threatened US sanctions, Novak said Russia is able to complete pipeline construction on its own — without help from foreign contractors.

When operational, it’ll deliver 55 billion cubic meters of natural gas annually to Germany and other European countries annually.

Washington could be organizing a color revolution and mass protests in Moldova like the ones that have already gripped Belarus and Kyrgyzstan. The Moldovan elections are scheduled for November 1 and have eight presidential candidates participating. The main rivals however are current President Igor Dodon, considered “pro-Russian,” and former Prime Minister Maia Sandu, considered “pro-European.”

There is a combination of internal and external factors at play in Moldova, something that has come to typically define the post-Soviet space. There is constant internal instability when considering the breakaway region of Transnistria, weak statehood, many conflicting ideological interest groups, and active attempts to get Moldova into the NATO and EU sphere of influence. This is what makes Moldova at high risk of experiencing a color revolution after the upcoming presidential elections if Dodon is re-elected.

The story is very apocryphal now, but it holds that in 146 BC, Rome capped off the Third Punic War by sacking Carthage and salting the earth so that nothing would ever grow there again. It probably never happened, which is sort of a shame, because it’s an excellent metaphor for European activity on Africa’s Mediterranean Coast.

Wherever Europe’s attention turns in northern Africa, that region is the worse for it. In recent years, this has meant Libya, where the destruction of the Libyan government during the 2011 NATO intervention there is now set to give way to direct European Union intervention.

NATO was quite pleased with its 2011 handiwork, which saw Moammar Gaddafi removed from power and quickly killed. The assumption was that this would lead to an orderly transition of power. Instead it led to a civil war that’s continued to tear the country apart ever since.

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov dropped a bombshell on Tuesday, warning that Russia might halt all dialogue with the European Union. Mr. Lavrov offered no explanation for what was probably the most severe public statement on the EU of his career. Perhaps he was reacting to extended talks he recently held with EU Foreign Minister Josep Borrell — talks that, by all appearances, did not go well.

Naturally, the EU will respond to his statement with great displeasure and indignation, but Lavrov’s comment was actually rooted in a process that began long before the current crisis, all the way back to when Russian-EU relations looked positively upbeat and promising.

The United States and Poland closed a nuclear power deal potentially worth $18 billion as the Central European country seeks to reduce its reliance on coal and Russian natural gas.

While the deal is not yet final, there is a pretty good chance that Warsaw will pick the U.S. over its main competitors on the international nuclear energy scene, namely China and Russia.

“We are hopeful that the ultimate decisions that are made by Poland ... over a period of time will result in them choosing U.S. technology,” Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette told reporters as quoted by Reuters.

In a week when several major oil and gas reports were released, most notably the IEA World Energy Outlook 2020 and OPEC’s World Oil Outlook, a regional conflict is now on the brink of spiraling out of control.

The toxic combination of a military confrontation between Azerbaijan and Armenia, supported by Turkey and Russia respectively, and the confrontational stance that Ankara is taking in the East Med conflict are threatening to upend European energy supplies.

EMMANUEL MACRON confirmed that the EU would launch a devastating energy embargo against the UK if Boris Johnson refuses to give in on fisheries.

Emmanuel Macron reacted furiously to Boris Johnson's claims that trade talks are "over" between the UK and EU. Mr Macron has played hardball in the talks on fisheries, insisting on Thursday that French fishermen would "not be sacrificed" for the sake of a deal. However, if the UK leaves the EU without a deal then French fishermen could faced being banned from British waters.

The ruling coalition government of the Netherlands is moving forward on allowing children 12 and younger to legally end their own lives in the form of state-sanctioned assisted suicide.

Health Minister Hugo de Jonge said he will draft legislation to change current rules to allow for kids to legally undergo doctor-assisted suicide with parental consent.

In an October 13 letter he wrote to the Dutch parliament, de Jonge cited a study that “shows that there is a need for active termination of life among doctors and parents of incurably ill children, who are suffering hopelessly and unbearably and will die within the foreseeable future.”

De Jonge claims the new rules are designed to help a small “group of terminally ill children who agonize with no hope, and unbearable suffering.”

The new Dutch rule that de Jonge is drafting will lift possible prosecution doctors could face if they take additional actions, such as sedative euthanasia.

European Union leaders regret Turkey’s decision to send a natural gas exploration ship to contested waters in the Mediterranean, the bloc’s chairman said on Friday, reiterating that the EU would consider its options in December.

“We plan a summit in December. And we have planned, indeed, to tackle again and to assess the situation in the eastern Mediterranean and in Turkey,” European Council President Charles Michel told a news conference after an EU summit in Brussels.

“We deplore the unilateral actions and provocations by Turkey,” Michel said.

A Zionist-led war on a Palestinian cultural festival in Rome has exposed the fragility of the Italian political system when it comes to the conversation on Palestine and Israel. The sad truth is that, although Italy is not often associated with a "powerful" pro-Israel lobby as is the case in Washington, the pro-Israel influence in Italy is just as dangerous.

The latest episode began on September 24, when the Palestinian community in Rome announced plans to hold ‘Falastin – Festival della Palestina’, a cultural event that aims at illustrating the richness of Palestinian culture in all of its grandeur. The idea behind it is not to simply humanize Palestinians in the eyes of ordinary Italians, but to explore commonalities, to cement bonds and to build bridges. However, for Israel’s allies in Italy, even such unthreatening objectives were too much to bear.

London’s talks with Brussels to establish a trade deal have been deadlocked over the past few months. The situation grew increasingly complicated after the UK passed the Internal Market Bill in September, which the EU claims violates the Brexit conditions the sides earlier negotiated.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson has cautioned the EU that unless it makes fundamental changes to its approach towards post-Brexit trade negotiations with the UK, London might choose a no-deal scenario.

"I have concluded that we should get ready for January 1 with arrangements that are more like Australia's based on simple principles of global free trade", the British prime minister said.

EU hauliers are threatening to freeze out the UK from trading opportunities, a British haulage boss has warned, adding that the risk to the country's supply chains could be significant.

Populist senator Matteo Salvini sported a “Trump 2020” mask in Italian parliament on Tuesday ahead of remarks that he was set to deliver to the Senate.

“Greetings from the Senate, my speech in half an hour,” tweeted Salvini on Tuesday. “Good evening, friends.”

While immigration may not be the primary issue gripping the continent at present, thanks to Covid-19, populist attitudes are now embedded in the national conversation, though those of a liberal persuasion may be loath to admit it.

The liberals are rubbing their hands with glee. They told us it wouldn’t last, that it would never take a hold and that, in the end, everyone would see things their way. But the idea that right-wing populism is dead is both misguided and premature. Because the bugbear of Europe’s political elite is actually stronger than ever.

Sure, the faces we associate with populism, such as Italy’s Matteo Salvini and the UK’s Nigel Farage, may not be plastered all over our newspapers or television screens like they were just a year or two ago, but the reason for that is the ideas they represented and trumpeted across the European political stage have taken root.

By handing out a €6.5 billion fine against Gazprom, Warsaw has obviously and massively miscalculated because it did not only antagonize the Russian energy company as was intended, but also European partners of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline project, which the Polish government obviously had not considered.

Even leaders within the European Union were shocked at the huge fine that Poland is attempting to impose against Nord Stream 2.

By handing out a €6.5 billion fine against Gazprom, Warsaw has obviously and massively miscalculated because it did not only antagonize the Russian energy company as was intended, but also European partners of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline project, which the Polish government obviously had not considered. Even leaders within the European Union were shocked at the huge fine that Poland is attempting to impose against Nord Stream 2.

Surprise, surprise, the European Commission (EC) had a “Roadmap on Vaccination” ready months before the COVID-19 pandemic broke out.

The Roadmap should lead to a “commission proposal for a common vaccination card / passport for EU citizens by 2022”.

Last updated during the third quarter of 2019, the 10-page document was followed, on September 12th, by a “global vaccination summit” jointly hosted by the EC and the World Health Organization (WHO).

The U.S. has imposed new sanctions on Iran which will make ANY trade with the country very difficult:

[T]he Trump administration has decided to impose yet further sanctions on the country, this time targeting the entirety of the Iranian financial sector. These new measures carry biting secondary sanctions effects that cut off third parties’ access to the U.S. financial sector if they engage with Iran’s financial sector. Since the idea was first floated publicly, many have argued that sanctioning Iran’s financial sector would eviscerate what humanitarian trade has survived the heavy hand of existing U.S. sanctions.
Behind the move was pressure from the Zionist lobby. President Trump is in need of campaign funds and the lobby provides those. The move is also designed to preempt any attempts by a potentially new administration to revive the nuclear agreement with Iran:

Polls taken in seven European countries reveal they massively favor Biden there, by 67 percent to 14 percent for the incumbent. It just shows that continent’s ignorance of the US, and will make Americans more likely to vote Trump.

As an American who’s lived in Europe for the majority of my adult life (if Brexit Britain can still be described as being part of that continent), I am constantly amazed at how little people over here understand us Yanks and our country.

I am not sure whether that’s because of some underlying contempt from the old countries towards our still comparatively young nation, or a resentment of how America has overtaken them all to become the world’s leader, or just some snobbery about our supposed loudness, or arrogance, or cultural deficiencies. Or perhaps it's simply that Europeans tend, perhaps with the exception of the Brits, to be much more left-leaning than most Americans.

By strengthening the presence of warships from non-Black Sea NATO members in the Black Sea, the military bloc is attempting to demonstrate its dominance in the region and the Alliance’s desire to neutralize and pressurize Russia’s influence in the area. Moscow’s Black Sea influence significantly increased after Crimea’s 2014 reunification with Russia. NATO’s military presence in the Black Sea is significantly strengthening, especially as warships in the area increased by 33% from January to September compared to the same period time last year. In 40% of cases, these ships are equipped with high-precision long-range weapons. This can be seen as a NATO attempt to intimidate Russia.

Polish authorities have fined Russia's Gazprom a whopping and unprecedented $7.6 billion (or 6.5 billion euros) for constructing the controversial Nord Stream 2 pipeline to Germany.

While Poland anti-trust authorities have claimed Nord Stream 2 is fundamentally a politically motivated attempt to punish Polish consumers while increasing European dependence on on Russian imports, Germany has stood by the project even amid the Navalny poisoning affair which has strained its relations with Russia over the past month.

Poland's Office of Competition and Consumer Protection decision seeks to legally force the six companies jointly building and financing the project to cancel their contracts, despite the gas pipeline being in its final phase of development. This includes European investors OMV, Wintershall, Engie, Shell and Uniper.

INTRACTABLE disagreements over British fishing waters hit a new and jaw-droppingly bizarre low today when the EU's chief negotiator Michel Barnier basically claimed our North Sea cod and mackerel were ardent Remainers. I'm not kidding.

Tensions remain high in the Eastern Mediterranean as two NATO allies, Turkey and Greece, are seeking a way out of the standoff triggered by Ankara's seismic vessel Oruç Reis engaging in gas exploration in the disputed waters. Egyptian researcher Mohammad Fawzi has shed light on the brewing conflict and the balance of power in the region.

Oruç Reis's dispatch to waters claimed by Athens, Ankara and Nicosia last month came in response to the 6 August Greek-Egyptian agreement demarcating exclusive economic zones (EEZ) in the Eastern Mediterranean between the two powers. Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis hailed the accords, adding that they had brought to naught the November 2019 memorandum of understanding between Turkey and Tripoli which delineated the sea in the interests of Ankara and the Government of National Accord (GNA).

George Soros and his allies in the European parliament are currently celebrating a victory at the European Court of Human Rights against Hungary and its Prime Minister Viktor Orban after the ruling that the country's law that forced its Central European University out of Hungary contradicts the EU law.

This is only the latest of attacks on the Eastern European country and its leader mounted by Europe's various leftist parties and EU institutions in their ongoing crusade against the so-called illiberal states, which is how they describe Christian right-of-centre governments of countries such as Poland and Hungary.

A European Commission report on staff diversity within European Union institutions has accused the EU of being too white and not having enough representation from minority communities.

The report has stated that while ethnic minorities make up at least 10 per cent of the population in the European Union, the number of ethnic minorities within EU institutions is far lower.

As a result, the European Commission has vowed to launch an investigation into the ethnic profiles of its own employees to set possible quotas for its recruitment policy, Le Figaro reports.

Russia will respond to possible additional restrictions on the access of its goods to the EU market, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Monday. He was speaking at a meeting with the members of the Association of European Businesses (AEB).

Lavrov recalled that the European Commission had prepared a report on significant distortions in the economy of the Russian Federation for the purpose of trade defense investigations.

"The document is openly biased, fraught with additional restrictions on the access of Russian goods to the EU market, which, of course, will not remain unanswered, as you understand," the minister said.

One of the more diabolical aspects of the protracted COVID ‘crisis’ in countries like the United Kingdom, the United States and Australia, is the intellectually dishonest claim that Coronavirus in their countries is somehow different from the Coronavirus in other western countries.

It’s like there are two parallel universes now. While the Anglosphere continues to ramp-up its emergency ‘pandemic’ measures and mandatory mask and quarantine policies, their Scandinavian counterparts like Sweden, Norway or Denmark have already returned to life as normal; no masks on public transport (although Norway just introduced a new rule today advising masks on crowded carriages), no obsessive social distancing rules, no snap lockdowns, and certainly no draconian laws and threats of £10,000 fines made by government leaders, or holding the country hostage until a wonder vaccine arrives in the spring. The contrast couldn’t be more extreme.

The French president is showing signs that he’s willing to follow the path first forged by General De Gaulle, who kicked US forces out of France and pulled the country out of NATO to preserve sovereignty and independence.

It was a remarkable statement from a modern European leader. During a visit to Lithuania this week, French President Emmanuel Macron said, “We, some countries more than others, gave up on our strategic independence by depending too much on American weapons systems. We cannot accept to live in a bipolar world made up of the US and China.”

After UK trade talks with the EU reached deadlock on several contentious issues such as fishing rights, Britain signed a fisheries framework agreement with Norway on 30 September, hailed by German Chancellor Angela Merkel as an indication the country is on a “constructive path”.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson is reportedly hoping to pressure French President Emmanuel Macron to concede to UK demands regarding fishing rights as the price for a post-Brexit trade and security deal with the EU at a crunch meeting with the European commission president Ursula von der Leyen on Saturday, reports The Guardian.

As the Brexit endgame moves ever closer, the EU says it will sue the British government over its intention to breach the Withdrawal Agreement. But it’s a hollow threat borne out of exasperation over the UK’s tactics.

As the European Union launches legal proceedings against the UK over its stated intention to breach the agreement, in reality the bullies of Brussels are simply trying to pile on the pressure until a deal is finalized or we leave without one.

Hollow threats are a go-to weapon in the EU arsenal.

Eva Hamilton, the former CEO of Sweden’s public television broadcaster SVT, has claimed that no one in Sweden likes U.S. President Donald J. Trump and that Swedes view him as dangerous.

Ms Hamilton made her comments on Friday on Swedish television after reports revealed that President Trump had tested positive for the Wuhan coronavirus along with First Lady Melania Trump.

She told the presenters of TV4’s Nyhetsmorgon programme that the infection could end up benefitting the U.S. leader going into next month’s presidential election.

“I think he’s going to win this. Assuming he survives,” Hamilton said, according to Nyheter Idag.

Yesterday, it was agreed upon at the European Council special meeting that Belarus will be sanctioned. However, the scope of the sanctions and the long path to agree on them, demonstrates that the European Union is in a crisis and cannot project its power as it wishes. German Chancellor Angela Merkel described the bilateral agreement on Belarus and the strategic approach to Turkey as a step forward. The chancellor stated that “we had many discussions today on the issues of Belarus and Turkey, Cyprus and Greece. In short, I can say that they were completely successful.”

Renewed clashes between Armenian and Azerbaijani forces have been underway since Sunday when both sides accused each other of aggression along the line of contact in Nagorno-Karabakh. The two subsequently announced the marshalling of their respective forces, with Baku declaring partial mobilisation and Yerevan full mobilisation.

Fighting continues in Nagorno-Karabakh, as both sides publish numerous videos of enemy aircraft and miltary vehicles, destroyed during the clashes. Russia, France, and many other countries have called on Armenia and Azerbaijan to cease the hostilities and return to negotiations, while Turkey has supported Baku, promising aid "in talks and in combat", and warning that any aggression against Azerbaijani territory is an attack against Ankara.

It was a mistake that there was no dialogue between Europe and Russia over arms reductions, French President Emmanuel Macron said at a joint news conference with Latvian Prime Minister Krisjanis Karins on Wednesday.

"The disarmament agreements were concluded between the United States and Russia and we were not even a party to them, but in the recent 15 years those agreements have been scrapped," he said. "We are no longer protected. In particular, it concerns the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty that the United States quitted. And what is instead? Nothing."

According to Macron, "It could have happened as Europe failed to build dialogue with Russia over the Europe-related disarmament issues." "It was a mistake," he believes.

Prime Minister Viktor Orban has accused European Commission Vice President Vera Jourova of making “derogatory public statements” suggesting Hungarians are building a “sick democracy.”

Orban called for Jourova’s resignation in a letter to Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, which was published on Tuesday.

“According to the vice president, in Hungary a ‘sick democracy’ is being built,” Orban said.

The majority of people tend to think of the concept of history as if it is something relegated only to the past. As if they are not living through what will become history in the future. Doing so allows them to maintain a thought process that convinces them that world wars and European wars, in general, are over.

After all, Europe learned its lesson in the Big One – and the Big One after that. Of course, with any such incident, there’s history, and there’s what actually happened.

If things between Greece and Turkey don’t cool down, a European/Mediterranean war will ensue.

Such a war would not be merely European but Euro-Asian and, at its furthest reach, global.

Activists with the right-wing “Flemish Interest” party drove their cars to the Belgian capital on Sunday in an effort to counter the formation of the country’s new federal cabinet.

Small family sedans, monstrous pickup trucks, flashy sports cars and even buses with yellow-and-black Flemish lion flags were spotted all over Belgium over the weekend, as right-wing “Flemish Interest” activists launched what they describe as one of their biggest demonstrations in decades.

Convoys from the country’s Flemish regions – over 5000 cars carrying more than 10,000 people according to organizers, arrived to an open-air parking lot in the suburb of the Belgian capital, where a rally was held.

As previous surveys have indicated, nearly four out of ten Danish Muslims would like to have the country's laws at least partly based on Sharia law, and over 10 percent even said Denmark's laws should be solely based on Sharia.

Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen has strongly denounced recent examples of Sharia law practised by certain imams in the country.

Among others things, controversial imam Abu Bashar (civil name Mohamad Al-Khaled Samha) from the city of Odense has demanded than women sign divorce contracts, which is contrary to Danish law. According to them, a woman loses custody of her children if she remarries or behaves in a way that "violates her own or her family's honour", and additionally must provide her husband with money to obtain a divorce.

Odense Mayor Peter Rahbæk Juel was shocked and distressed by the news.

France has demanded that every EU country be forced to take in a share of illegal immigrants arriving on European soil.

Speaking to France Inter on Wednesday, Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin asserted that “the migration question can only be settled at the European level” and that every EU nation must share the burden of resettling third world migrants.

“We still want a European solidarity. There is no reason why only Italy, France, and Germany, broadly speaking, with Greece share this solidarity,” Darmanin said.

The French minister made his remarks shortly before Brussels revealed that a “compulsory solidarity mechanism” would be part of plans to force a Europe-wide asylum and migration system on every country in the bloc.

We, Belgian doctors and health professionals, wish to express our serious concern about the evolution of the situation in the recent months surrounding the outbreak of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. We call on politicians to be independently and critically informed in the decision-making process and in the compulsory implementation of corona-measures. We ask for an open debate, where all experts are represented without any form of censorship. After the initial panic surrounding covid-19, the objective facts now show a completely different picture – there is no medical justification for any emergency policy anymore.

The current crisis management has become totally disproportionate and causes more damage than it does any good.

We call for an end to all measures and ask for an immediate restoration of our normal democratic governance and legal structures and of all our civil liberties.

Earlier this month, Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban expressed support for incumbent US President Donald Trump in the upcoming election after the two officials held a telephone conversation.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has endorsed Donald Trump's re-election bid in the upcoming US presidential vote, saying that the Democrats have forced "moral imperialism" on the international community.

"We root for Donald Trump's victory because we know well American Democratic governments' diplomacy, built on moral imperialism. We have been forced to sample it before, we did not like it, we do not want seconds", Orban wrote in an essay.

Trump Administration officials have been saying this for weeks, but on Friday reiterated their intentions to try to enforce a UN Security Council resolution that includes broad sanctions against Iran. Officials say they expect every nation to comply.

The glaring problem with this is that the resolution doesn’t exist, at least not as an active resolution the US wants. The P5+1 nuclear deal gave the US the authority to reimpose sanctions on Iran, but the US had withdrawn from that pact years ago. Though the Trump Administration argued that didn’t matter, the UN has virtually unanimously rejected their interpretation, and rejected the UN Security Council resolution. The US believes the resolution becomes active Sunday, but the reality is it just doesn’t exist legally.

Via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

Twice in the past week, the United States has clumsily weighed into mounting tensions in the East Mediterranean between Greece and Turkey.

First, Washington announced last weekend the opening of a maritime security base on the island state of Cyprus, which is allied with Greece.

Then the U.S. followed up by formally clearing the way to send weapons to Cyprus, ending a 33-year arms embargo. Washington claims the arms are “non-lethal”, but we have seen that semantic ruse played before with regard to U.S. weaponizing Ukraine and other places. Never mind the hairsplitting, the move is a military involvement whichever way it’s presented.

On Saturday, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was forced to fly to Nicosia to discuss the situation in the Mediterranean Sea. The visit took place two weeks after the telephone talks between the presidents of the United States, Turkey and the Greek prime minister.

Donald Trump was unable to effectively resolve the Turkish-Greek controversy. During the talks, Kyriakos Mitsotakis complained about “destabilizing actions of Turkey, threatening peace and stability in the region, as well as testing NATO cohesion.” In response, Erdogan claimed the readiness to conduct a dialogue to resolve contradictions.

Asa result, Ankara sent another geological reconnaissance ship to the Mediterranean Sea. And exacerbated the already tense situation.

The essence of the conflict between Turkey, Greece and Cyprus lies precisely in the fact that Turkey is conducting geological exploration of minerals in the waters that Greece and Cyprus consider their exclusive economic zone.

The coronavirus crisis in previous months overshadowed the issue of terrorism and Islamic radicalism but as official reports from Germany and France show, the danger of terrorism has not disappeared, but is actually growing, writes Lukáš Lho?an in his commentary for Reflex.cz.

"The threat of terrorism is unusually high," French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin admitted a few days ago in connection with the trial of people accused of supporting Islamic terrorists who attacked Charlie Hebdo magazine.

According to Darmanin, Islamic terrorism remains the main violent threat. The minister added that the French authorities currently have 8,132 people on a special list of potential terrorists, the vast majority of whom are Muslims. This is a huge number, given the fact that there are "only" 700 people on a similar list in Germany.

After a solid nine-month stretch that was blissfully devoid of major Brexit-related news as the global COVID-19 pandemic raged on, we declared last night that Brexit talks "suddenly matter again" as the drop in the pound was blamed - incorrectly, as Bloomberg later determined - for triggering yesterday's intraday declines in US markets.

But on Friday morning, American traders awoke to some surprisingly positive trade news out of Great Britain. A trade deal with Japan had been agreed to in principle, which would - if finally ratified by both countries - allow 99% of the UK's exports to Japan to cross the border tariff-free.

What's more, the deal even gave Johnson the opportunity to gloat, as Reuters reported the digital and data provisions in the agreement went "far beyond" those in the EU's trade deal with Japan.

The deal also allowed BoJo to show voters that Brexit is already giving them new options to strike favorable free trade deals.

Yet another provocation sure to increase tensions between Russian and NATO has begun this week in the form of war games hosted by the Republic of Georgia.

On Monday the Noble Partner 2020 military exercises kicked off, which involves close to 3,000 NATO troops from the US, Britain, France and Poland. Centered on the capital of Tibilisi, the games will simulate an external invasion of the caucuses country.

The US Army began training exercises last week ahead of the main part of the games, which will go through September 18.

Georgian Prime Minister Giorgi Gakharia sought to sidestep any accusations, describing the drills as “a guarantee of peace in our country” and “are not directed against anyone,” in an opening address to troops.

Embattled Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko has remained defiant after weeks of mass protests have brought parts of the country, especially the capital of Minsk, to a standstill, following his disputed August 9 reelection to a sixth term. He's actually been seen walking the presidential compound grounds in combat fatigues while holding an automatic rifle, to show just how serious he is about resisting the unrest increasingly at the gates of his residence.

But on Tuesday he showed the first signs he might be willing to compromise as both domestic and international pressures grow toward holding a fresh election. The opposition claims the Aug.9 election was "rigged" as exiled opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya urges "international pressure on this regime" while issuing regular messages from neighboring Lithuania

Since August election, Belarusian President Lukashenko has accused NATO of building up forces to oust him.

Hundreds of US troops have arrived in Lithuania to take part in military drills near the border of Belarus, adding to the mounting tensions over the disputed Belarusian presidential election. On Saturday, about a dozen Abrams tanks crossed into Lithuania from neighboring Poland.

Since the August 9th presidential election in Belarus, the US and EU have rejected the results and called for a fresh round of votes. The official results gave incumbent President Alexander Lukashenko 80 percent of the votes. Since the controversy over the election started, Lukashenko has accused NATO of building up a military force on Belarus’ borders in an effort to oust the embattled president.